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DNC 2012: Barack Obama, the conventional president

As president, Obama has been neither what his allies nor his critics expected. | AP Photo

If Washington, or Obama himself, was surprised by the triumph of conventional thinking in this presidency, it was because people did not understand the arc of Obama’s career before the presidency, according to his most accomplished biographers. The assumption that Obama was unconventional was based almost entirely on one factor: race.

“What was there in his political persona, aside from the color of his skin, that offered a profound sense of doing things differently?” asked David Maraniss, associate editor of The Washington Post and author of “Barack Obama: The Story.” “His life in so many ways was a long search for the normal, the conventional, in both his private and public life, after such an unusual and unconventional upbringing,” which took him from Hawaii to Indonesia and back.

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“I think it was clear in 2008, and clearer now, that the only thing that was truly radical about Barack Obama was the radicalism of being the first African-American president,” agreed David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has written several presidential histories and has come to know Obama personally, said the 44th president’s policies — such as a stimulus package that may have averted another Depression and an overhaul of health care policy — most likely will be seen as profoundly far-reaching. But in contrast to the soaring expectations Obama himself helped set, Goodwin said his tenure is viewed through the prism of his failure to transcend the deep divisions in Washington.

“The country assumed what he meant by [being] transformational was that he would get the two sides to come together because our first image of a leader just sticks,” Goodwin said, citing his famous 2004 Democratic convention speech when he called for an end to mindless partisanship.

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It wasn’t just the country that had expectations for a transformative presidency. These were Obama’s expectations, too. When he was running against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama in a Reno newspaper interview cited Ronald Reagan as a better role model than Bill Clinton, because of the way Reagan had fundamentally altered the national debate in ways that outlasted his actual time in office.

Yet the agenda he pursued reflected conventional Democratic priorities. Little surprise that the people around him were likewise conventional — intelligent and deeply devoted aides who with rare exceptions were standard-issue political staffers, most with careers begun on Capitol Hill and few with deep immersion in the world of ideas.

“Where’s the Moynihan, where’s the Kissinger? There’s nobody that can go broader and deeper,” said Evan Thomas, a veteran journalist and biographer. “The consulting class and hacks have taken over. It’s former congressional staffers playing small-ball.”

The embrace of conventionality is pervasive in this year's campaign. In 2008, Obama's message blurred standard political lines and won several historically GOP states. This year he has followed a check-the-box strategy aimed mostly at motivating traditional Democratic constituencies through highly targeted appeals.

The political operative ethos of this West Wing is seen in how reflexively Obama reacts to outside pressure, such as whether to dump a troublesome appointee overboard.

Mitt Romney is merely a political confidence trickster looking for a way to win votes and fool the voters to achieve his personal goal. Unfortunately, Romney's personal goals have nothing to do with the American people. He is shipped jobs overseas all his life. Mitt Romney would have destroyed manufacturing forever in America.

Indiana_Dem cynicus ... how's that austerity thing working over there in the UK? ********************************** That's right numb-nuts....SPEND your way to prosperity!!!! Ole Indiana proving one more time..."You can't fix STUPID!!!!" or as Sloooooooow Joe Biden says: "we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt!"

The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished

"The problem with Socialism, is that eventually you run out of other people's money" - Margaret Thatcher

By Janet Daley9:00PM BST 01 Sep 2012

The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. This is the defining political problem of the early 21st century.

With double names, the American media continues their trog of leavin'-out a whole lot of INTEL so someone can make a thought-ful decision. Instead You've got no mention of the name Barry Soetoro. Then you fail to let us in on how the billion dollar deal with bain and GE Capital, MSNBC, GE works.

It's as though you've nothing more to choose from than the lesser of two evils.

That's how the rig stays in place for their ambitions.

Nope - Get over it MSM.. You've duped this time more to those with eyes open.

BOTH of your hand-picked teleprompter readers are what the USA needs? LOL

Barack Obama is an extraordinary man put into an extraordinary situation and produced extraordinary results. Perhaps surprisingly to some, he did it through fairly conventional methods. There can be no doubt that President Obama is a different breed of political animal. His admirable, deep-seated aversion to super PACs and plutocrats trying to dominate elections is presently causing him to lag well behind the Republican opponent, who has no such moral qualms. His deep, uncommon sense of decency and respect for others has yet to catch on on Capitol Hill, though some individuals have surely been influenced positively by their exposure to his virtues. We need four more years of his positive influence, even if it doesn't become the norm in Washington.

From the day he was inaugurated, the Republicans hardened their hearts and conspired to put politics before country and prove to Americans the great Obama could not unite with them. They wouldn't let it happen. They'd go radical and vote against things they had long voted for. They'd vote against Republican ideas, practices and policies if President Obama endorsed them. That's radical. If American voters don't punish Republicans at the ballot boxes for their irrational and cynical obstructionism, for putting party and politics before country and economic growth, then we can expect more bickering on Capitol Hill, more jobs bills defeated, more Republican attempts to starve our economic recovery, and more sluggish growth.

I do hope (and believe) President Obama will become more the moral leader in his second term. Not just by his uplifting presence, but by making the moral case eloquently for noble causes and against ignoble ones. With no more elections to worry about, we will finally see the what freed Obama looks like. I expect it to be very good.

No, the Nobel Peace Prize is not comical. Obama has tread very carefully through complicated times, improving US relations with Russia and China and starting a complicated movement in the developing world, resisting the temptation to impulsive action which could have triggered wider war. He has worked hard behind the scene to maintain peace. Obama has a grip on things - a sustained focus of attention - to go with his pragmatic side. He pushed hard for the stimulus package and the start of health care reform - in urging congresspeople to make votes which cost them their next election. We can't tell yet what his second term will be like - since without strong majorities in the House and Senate his maneuvering room will be limited by Republican clutching to fear, bitterness, disgust, disdain, greed and sanctimonious fraud. But if America wants to see what achievement he is capable of --- the ballot box provides the way.

Fact is, we were doing just fine under Clinton. We didn't need the Bush tax cuts (for everyone, not just the wealthy). We didn't need the war in Iraq. We didn't need the Medicare prescription benefit (unpaid for), we just needed a bit of tweaking on Medicare. We could've kept the budget balanced and paid down the debt. A few tweaks to social security would've kept it going for another few decades.

Don't give me this Faux News nonsense about the welfare state. More children live in poverty in the USA than in any other rich nation, and the studies show that they are more likely than ever to become wards of the state due to malnutrition, poor education, and poor health care. Is that really a bargain for us taxpayers? Let's just keep our children in poverty, and incarcerate them after they grow up. Way to make smart decisions, there!

From the article: Four years later, as the president this week arrives in Charlotte, N.C., to justify his first term and make the case for a second, it is clear that one side’s hopes and the other’s fears both failed dramatically to anticipate the reality of Obama. He is not a 21st-century FDR; nor is he a Jeremiah Wright-style radical in the Oval Office.

(Also on POLITICO: Full coverage of the Democratic convention)

He is a man of conventional instincts, practicing conventional politics, sitting atop what has been a mostly conventional presidency.

It's not very often that I do this, but my first reaction to POLITICO's take on the subject at hand is... CRAPOLA!! While it's a possibility that Obie has disappointed the foaming at the mouth, lunatic, left-wing fringe by his failure to totally OBLITERATE the free market economy; it's inaccurate to say that his damage wasn't anticipated by those of us on the liberty-loving right.

We knew what he wanted to do to this country, and we watched almost helplessly for the first two years as he accomplished his damaging agenda with a Democrat-controlled Congress.

When he COULD have been taking concrete steps to help the economy and recover jobs, he instead chose to damage American energy production, funnel taxpayer money to his union thug and "green energy" friends, and ram through his healthcare takeover by purchasing the votes of reluctant Senators.

We KNEW this community organizer intended to do damage to America, and he's done just that!